At present, mobile mapping systems have shown broad prospects for application in various fields such as forest resource investigation, traffic facility monitoring and tunnel survey. Integrated navigation of Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU, also known as inertial navigation system) is almost a standard configuration for mainstream mobile mapping systems. However, such systems fail to work effectively in the case of GPS signal failures.
Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology can overcome the above shortcomings and reduce total costs of a three-dimensional mapping system. The application of the SLAM technology to mobile survey has become an international research hotspot. It is widely required in modern three-dimensional surveying and mapping, unmanned driving and intelligent robots. There are mainly three popular mobile survey schemes currently: laser-based SLAM, binocular-vision-based SLAM and depth-camera-based SLAM, among which laser-based SLAM is relatively stable and reliable.
However, in the related art, when the SLAM technology is applied to a LIDAR-based mobile mapping system, the accuracy of the outputted map needs to be improved.